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Thursday, August 9, 2012

As my Pendragon actual play posts roll along (I'm currently writing up reports for years 534 and 535 and we're due to play 536 sometime in the next week, meaning we've now officially got less than 30 years to go in the campaign chrnology), I've been mulling over how to collate existing posts.

I've had a couple commenters suggest/request an omnibus PDF of all the posts, and that's certainly an idea, but I feel like a project of this scope deserves something a little more...special, I guess? I've been thinking of putting out the posts as individual PDF and maybe even print zines. I've even been mulling over replacing the pictures I culled off the Internet with original art.

Would there be any interest in such a venture? If the updates were printed on good-quality paper and staple-bound, would there be enough monetary interest to cover the costs?

Any other suggestions on how you'd like to see the Solo GPC collected would be welcome!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

If you've been on this blog recently, you might've noticed I updated my "Currently Running" links--and besides the redoubtable Pendragon, GURPS has joined the list as well. As part of my action plan to find a system to master, I'm giving GURPS the first crack. I figured I'd start with the crunchiest system I owned and work my way back until I found something my group and I liked.

We might just end up sticking with GURPS, as it turns out. Jury's still out on whether it's a bit too crunchy for our tastes, but we're also having a good time with the current campaign. I'm digging the system's extreme flexibility and customizability. And as I grow more familiar and comfortable with the system the crunchiness, as anticipated, begins to fade into the background. So who knows?

This hasn't prevented me from thinking of alternatives, of course. In my original post on system mastery, I mentioned Basic Roleplaying and Savage Worlds as other choices. But recently another possibility has occurred to me: Basic/Expert D&D!

I realize this is really nothing new. People have been hacking D&D into "universal" systems pretty much from the get-go. Indeed, up through the early 80s pretty much every system out there was essentially someone's D&D house rules. And yet more recently d20 made its bid to become the one D&D-derived system to rule them all. As that proved, it's not always a good thing to take a game beyond its intended limits. And yet I was surprised to realize that such a venerable system as B/X D&D--which turned 30 last year, positively ancient by gaming standards--has suddenly flowered into this de facto "universal" system. In a way it reminds me of the progression of the Palladium system, which started out as a D&D clone and kept getting modded, cludged, bolted, and bashed to fit a nearly universal set of genre conventions. Unlike Palladium, however, I feel that B/X has managed to retain its core simplicity through the various mods.

If nothing else, it certainly makes for an interesting addition to my list of potential systems to master.